Valve is about to win the console generation

Post by tinybear1 » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:05 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #85

TheRoque wrote: post #51

I hardly understand the headline. Steam machine is just a computer, and since it can be used for other stuff than playing games, then it can't have the cheap pricing of a console. Most consoles are sold at a loss, and the benefits are made when selling console-exclusive games. If you sell something at a loss, but users aren't forced to buy your games, then you're not gonna make any money. Hence, the Steam Machine (AK…

Very few consoles were sold at a loss. Some certainly were, like the fat PS3. But that was the exception, not the rule. More relevantly, none of the current generation (ps5, xbox series, switch 2) are sold at a loss. They don't have large margins, but they are sold above cost. The Taiwanese computer manufacturers won't be phased by thin margins; that's their modus operandi.

Post by Forgeties79 » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:06 AM UTC

xgulfie wrote: post #93

Forgeties79 wrote: post #50

We heard this literally with the previous steam machine lol There’s no doubt they’re tee’d up to radically alter the landscape. But man they better have a truly plug and play, turnkey system if they want to compete with consoles. The steamdeck even after this many years is absolutely trash at going from handheld to docked (better the other direction at least) and is incredibly hit or miss when it’s plugged into a TV…

Literally every USB-C dock I've ever used with any laptop has these sorts of issues. On the flip side, I'm pretty confident AMD will be able to output to DisplayPort

Post by SchemaLoad » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:07 AM UTC

xgulfie wrote: post #89

skissane wrote: post #42

So, Steam is planning to sell these at a loss, but isn’t planning to lock out third party OS? What’s to stop people buying them to use for completely unrelated use cases? I guess it depends on how big the loss is… if it is small, it might not be really worth it for most people; but any larger, I wonder how sustainable this will be.

What's stopping someone from using a steam deck for running emulators, SuperTuxKart, and pirated games? This isn't their first rodeo

Post by jsheard » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:14 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #109

jsheard wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That build uses a 13 year old CPU from AliExpress, there's no accounting for taste but I think most entry level builds are aiming a little higher than that. Some newer games won't even try to run on a CPU of that vintage since it doesn't have AVX2 support.

It was released in 2016 and does support AVX2. In general what matters when building a decent rig is aiming to balance performance to optimize against bottle necks. He demonstrated the system in various modern games, for instance running Delta Force at 4k/120FPS. And the CPU was scarcely getting touched - running at around 20%. You can spend a ton of money on a bleeding edge CPU and see 0 performance gain in almost a…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:18 AM UTC

SchemaLoad wrote: post #116

Forgeties79 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the steamdeck official dock plugged into my LGC1, which is one model in a very popular line of TV’s, via hdmi.

The official steam deck dock seems to be fairly buggy, it's widely complained about. I've been using an Apple USB-C to HDMI adapter and it's worked perfect on every TV I've tried it on. Since the steam machines don't use USB-C video out this wouldn't be an issue.